


Good Morning Poppet

by Pelkie



Series: When You Return Home [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: A smidgen of profanity, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, By which I mean Vanitas is here to stay and thats that on that, Comfort Food, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Mentioned Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Platonic Relationships, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Sora's heart hotel squad, Vanitas (Kingdom Hearts)-centric, With brief cameo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 12:15:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19812109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pelkie/pseuds/Pelkie
Summary: "So." He drawled. "Sora's spawn. How do you fit in?"[Or; Vanitas and Xion have a conversation about identity.]





	Good Morning Poppet

**Author's Note:**

> When I first started writing this, it was just supposed to be a cute fluffy fic where these two bond, but my ideas got so ambitious I pretty much had to rewrite this whole thing to mold it to fit the series it's now gonna be a part of. I've stared at and reread this so many times I can't even understand it anymore so I thought I better just release it into the world already. Hope y'all enjoy. I'm going to sleep

It's that ambiguous time in the morning; The one that might still classify as 'night', to many. In some places the horizon would already be marching across the sky in a hazy mix of purples and oranges, and in others, the heavens would continue to sleep; frosty mildew in the grass, and inhabitants still curled up under the blanket of darkness. But here, amongst the perpetual starlight of the lanes between, the tower and its inhabitants catch their sleep. For the most part, that is.

Vanitas stalks the halls concealed from the light. The others might need a candle, or the light from a gummi phone for comfort, if nothing else. But his eyes are attune, and as he pads along the corridor, there's a chitter and a scraping of claws against the tiles as a flood skitters after him.

He fixes scarlet eyes on his antsy counterpart in frustration, kicking a foot out as it desperately scrabbles at his ankle with a whine. "Hey. Get lost you little shit, I need to think."

But the two of them have come to an impasse, and neither makes a move. The flood trills louder, pistoning its little claws against his pants, and finally, with a drawn out, long-suffering sigh, he lowers his hood, rolling his eyes as it moves so fast its almost an intangible mass of mist in its hurry to make a hammock in his clothing.

"If that's all." He says to the new weight on his back. "I need to do something." He knows his words fall on deaf ears, now that his counterpart has what it wants. He can feel the...satisfaction? The sense of victory that it feels from one-upping its master, and the slight reprieve of anxiety that comes with it. Its still a little bastard, but it’s stupid solution has granted him just that; head space to think.

So he heads to the library.

It can be pretty easy to get lost in Yen Sid's tower. The interior, much bigger than its outside, is just a collection of portals intricately connected Via a maze of staircases, and past the wing for the bedrooms, in the upper echelon of the tower, is an ornate archway, the path lit by glowing crescents that litter the walls.

He wanders in with a haggard sigh, throwing himself into a chair and shunting his forehead against the table like he could physically transfer his headache to a different place. Maybe that was one merit of the cure spell. He wouldn’t know- it had never been cast upon him. There’s two more floods scuttling around now- one for each sneeze he’d given when he dropped his heap of books on the table. And as if to add insult to injury, hood flood chooses then to dig its sharp little paws into the back of his neck , clambering to peek over his hair and refusing to settle.

“Knock it off....” He growls, itching to summon his keyblade.

He’s not _supposed_ to hurt the Unversed anymore. Nobody in the castle was, once it had come out during a particularly awkward training session that killing them _hurt_ him. He couldn’t make sense of the guilty looks shot his way after that. He figured they could only be insincere anyway, so he tried to forget about them. Although, not one Unversed had been killed by anyone but him since. He felt the absence of the chronic rushes of pain and knew that much to be true. He couldn’t stop himself from imagining the sneering behind his back though. How dare he impede on their training? If Master Yen Sid had ordered them otherwise, maybe they wouldn’t have even stopped. His frown became a scowl.

“Oh, hello!” A soft, surprised giggle calls from a distance. It’s only then that he realizes as his head snaps up guiltily that he isn’t alone.

Oh. It was her.

He can smell something sweet, and she’s in her pjs, a black band shirt from Twilight Town and some slightly raggedy fleece bottoms from a friend native to that world. They’re black too, but with a rainbow of flowers scattered all over them. _Xion_.

She's high up, balanced precariously at the top of a wooden ladder, tiptoeing to reach a book on the very top shelf of the expansive library. She’d been distractedly watching the two floods snapping at each other around the foot of the ladder, but glances at him and starts, almost falling. He moves instinctively(and practically shoots across the room) to hold the ladder, and mumbles something about her being careful.

“Thanks.”

“Maybe you should come down.” He shoots a dirty look at the two suspects, and they cower a little, chasing each other into a less precarious section.

“Not until I get this.” She huffs. With determination, she reaches up on the balls of her feet and tickles at the spine of the book until it thumps into her waiting arms in satisfaction with an “Oof!”

Grinning, she clambers downwards, missing a step or two at a time in her confidence that Vanitas would continue to hold the ladder, and brazenly hops off when there are just three rungs left. She shows him her prize as reward for being her accomplice, and he leans over to see that it’s just a storybook. But as he stares for a little while, the art begins to dance across the page like a mirage between them.

Xion’s answering smile is fond. “I like picture books.” She likes fairytales; children’s books and soft watercolour paintings of forest animals who spoke in the twang His Majesty sometimes fell into.

She and Roxas, and she guessed Vanitas, had never had a proper human childhood. Learning to read had been ultimately painless, what with retaining the ability through their somebodies, yet, before anything else gained clarity for her, she remembers a small time frame in Castle Oblivion, technicolour and scraps of memory against the white. Those times weren’t good, but the colour Axel and Roxas brought into her early life certainly was. Her favourite world was the 100 Acre Wood. The moment Sora had seen her reading he set his heart on taking her to meet all his wonderful friends and she’d all but dissolved into tears at her dear friend Winnie’s charm. They were so different to what she knew.

Vanitas could understand the fascination with things different from what he knew. A bed. It was so soft it was like being in the mouth of a beast, something to swallow him whole. Something sterile vs the dusty, windy bowels of the Keyblade graveyard.

"What are you doing here at this time?"

"Presumably the same as you."

"Couldn't sleep?"

"..."

"It's different here, isn't it?"

She brushes an affectionate thumb over the book. "But not a _bad_ different, no. It just feels... _surreal_. For me, to be here. To be me."

He’s curious, despite himself. She continues. "When people used to look at me, they could see...Someone else. Someone important to them, but they saw straight through me. Either that, or sometimes, they saw no face at all. I didn't actually have one, when I was born."

"I didn't. Either."

She nods. "But Sora gave you shape."

"Sora...Took us in." He and Ventus.

She smiles. "Yes. Sora was warm. I remember there being others. People at home in his heart."

Wearing a person like that's face can be a burden. He's a bit skittish of leaving the tower without his helmet. He knows one day he will be mistaken, and when that day comes he's not certain he'll be able to hold his tongue.

He's not sure who he is, if he's no longer Ventus. He's not Ventus, and he looks like Sora. He thought he was nothing but darkness, but now he rests among the guardians of light, with his brothers, his _kin,_ and despite himself, Sora makes him want to stay.

"What is it you need from here?" She asks. Realistically he knows she means the books, but it gives him pause anyway.

"The old geezer wants me to learn _cure_." He scoffs.

"Oh yeah? Any luck?"

"Its not well suited to dark magic. It is...easier to sacrifice your health in return for enough strength to seize victory in battle."

Xion frowns. "Easier...But not good."

"Its just about Survival. The most basic primal urge. You're definitely not above that, or you wouldn't be here."

"But what about your friends? Who will save them?"

He's been with Sora. The last time his heart had been in danger, Ventus had been the first line of defence to protect him. With Ventus gone, with everyone else gone, there was no one else to do it. No one else but him.

But, "I don't think anybody here is relying on me to do that."

"You're here because that's exactly what your heart told you to do."

  
His "heart", separate from Ventus. The life different from the one he had to live in the past, twice over. The things that drove him before. What is the meaning of it all, if there is one?

Xion leaves him to himself, wandering just a few paces away to his pile of books. She reads a few covers, before returning to her own with a secret smile.

Vanitas watches her reminisce thoughtfully for a time. He had no idea what she could be thinking, looking so at peace, and he could think of nothing but how different they were. He wonders what part of her had coveted the darkness enough to be on the side of Xehenort, but all he could see before him was a clear being of light. Someone who could easily come from Sora. They manage to sit in a decent silence for a while, though he also senses a shift in the air around her when she looks like she’s wanting to continue the conversation. Her fists ball on her knees and her legs jiggle a little like she’s buzzing in anticipation. Maybe it’s so obvious to him because he sees what he lacks, but despite her being a quiet person, she usually had a childlike giddiness to her. He never paid her much mind, true, but he knew she relished in the excitement of each first. Sora praised her often and the two goofed off together a lot.

Something compels him to ask. “So.” He drawled. “Sora’s spawn. How do you fit in?”

A resigned sigh comes from her, like she knew the question would come, and the story was already formed in her head. One look at the bleak shadows that formed when their eyes locked confirmed what he already knew.

“I.....I was made to be his replacement. Something bad happened to him, and to help, he had to sleep for a long time. Roxas and I were born around the same time, and we lived in his place while he slept. But...The organization made me to take away Sora’s memories through Roxas. What they didn’t know, was that...Sora’s heart would want us to be our own people, even without knowing us, and that we would come to grow our own hearts. Even I didn’t understand that at the time, so I thought the best I could do for them was to return to him.

  
She swallows. “You can always trust him, you know.” She knew he knew already (he’d shown the same compulsive desire to protect Sora that the rest of them possessed, after all.), but even so she wanted him to remember. 

Vanitas mulled that over. He didn’t hate Sora, a person who so flippantly accepted him. But even if his body would move go protect his ‘little brother’ on its own, a bitterness rose still in his throat at the way others cooed at the one who wore his face. There’s a deep, old ache in being born without an identity. Moreso when the body you have is just someone’s means to an end, and the existence of your heart is denied by all you know.

Worse; when your face takes shape, and its _him_ of all people. A person so loved, he dare not wander the worlds without covering his head in fear of upsetting the balance of what his presence symbolized. Vanitas was not a protector, and he’d never have the privilege of growing up like a normal child, in the light. Even all Ventus knew was the feeling of growing up alone, and that is what he remembers. Vanitas’ existence is the foil to his brothers; the unpleasantness and the cold everyone would rather forget. Existence was not his choice.

There are actually four people who’ve resided in Sora’s heart. In some ways, Ventus is Sora’s predecessor. He had a home to return to before Sora could even crawl. Roxas is with the rest of them to a point. His face is not his own. But people who shared faces could occur naturally too. Twins existed, and one conversation between he and his doppelganger is enough to differentiate between their vibrant personalities. He creates something personal, just by being himself. When it comes to him and Xion-

“-Vanitas?” She asks quietly, twiddling her thumbs. He stares expectantly at her, resting his cheek on his fist.

When he said nothing, she continued. “About....the face thing...”

His eyes narrowed. Hers dart quickly to his before underneath the table to a flock of floods and hareraisers materializing underneath the table. “Back then I didn’t feel...At first I barely thought. I reported to Säix and did as I was told. I was barely a person, just like they wanted.

“I didn’t have a face...”She repeats. “So I always kept my hood up so nobody could see. I had no idea what I was for or who I was, and nothing to strive towards. Nowhere else to be. If nobody had reached out to me, I probably would have completed my mission and Killed Sora and Roxas. I might still not have any agency of my own, and...What a terrible world that would be, I think. This little world we have, with little things to protect.

“Vanitas, that’s why...”She rubs at her eye, fingers twitching forward on the table as though to reach our before thinking better of herself. “Why I wanted to spend time with you. You’re already your own person but...let’s make lots of little reasons to be alive. Everyone. That’s what our lives are for now.”

He wanted to snarl. His face had been curling into a sneer as she spoke. It was all he could do to hold back the rotting, aching feeling in his chest. He wanted to cover it, like a fresh wound Xion was insisting on attacking. He wanted her, and the ache gone. He wanted to be angry at her for making his eyes sting and his hair stand on end and he bristled, tensing violently with a tremble. A mandrake wailed in tandem with his hiss: “I’m nobody’s pity case.” He spit.

Xion shakes her head vehemently. “No Vanitas! It’s just...Well, you always, you call Ven and Sora your brothers all the time and I just-well...” she gave a teary giggle, shrugging. “I was just jealous?”

His head snaps up violently to meet hers: a deer caught in the headlights. _Huh_?

She smiles kindly at him, apparently feeling brazen enough by how off guard she’d managed to take him. She reaches across the table, tugging at the sleeve of his hoodie. “I don’t suppose you could use a little sister, could you?”

“Are- _Are you fucking with me?_ ”

She covers her mouth with a fist. “I’ll even share my breakfast with you? Actually, I always make more than I need because every time I don’t Axel appears from thin air to take half of it. All he needs to get out of bed in the morning is a strip of bacon wafted in his face I swear. Anyway, have you even eaten?”

“It’s... _5 am_...” If he didn't understand whiplash before...

She shrugs. “ _’Early bird and all that,’_ I think he said once.”

When he stormed out of his room this morning looking for a distraction, he hadn’t expected _this_. He wasn’t sure he and this girl had even had a full conversation before, not that he could say that about many of the people here. It was so improbable he couldn’t even work up the energy to be mad between the confusion and the gross...ugh... _vulnerability_ , of it all.

It’s true this girl was one of them. He knew that much. And yet...He didn’t know she’d had such a similar start to him. He could tell she dare not explicitly compare them, and yet...it didn’t irritate him, to have her share with him.

Maybe it was the promise of breakfast she was plying him with. Maybe she’d inherited the Sora puppy Aura™. Whatever it was, it had him scowling at the plate pushed between them like he could burn a hole in it while his treasonous stomach growled. “...Breakfast?”

She nodded towards the sweet toast on the plate, and its almost comical the way he snatches bread off of the plate like a feral animal in grumpy obligation. She watches, bemused at his lack of manners. Hood flood chitters at her and she grins. “You can have some too.”

There are little pockets of fruit dried into the buttery bread, just as sweet as if slathered in jam, with a chewy texture that gives him pause. He was used to much more plain foods. Taking pleasure in meals is another new thing for him. Xion smiles in encouragement. “Do you like it?” She says softly.

“Hm.” He huffs. “Beats rations.”

That seems to please her. “A lot of people think raisins are gross! I’m pretty sure its mostly psychological though. Sora likes them in cakes and things, but he thinks I’m weird when I just eat them by themselves.“  
Vanitas frowned. “Xion.”

“Hm?”

“What you said...”

“I meant it all, if that’s what you’re asking.” She glances down at a flood gnawing at her chair leg and gives him a little pat. He seems to melt through her fingers, almost phasing through the leg with how intangible he becomes, and its like combing her fingers through water. The relentless chirping under the table seems a little quieter now, even though she spots Vanitas still jiggling his foot.

“Do all sisters...come with breakfast?” he chokes. _What?_

She chuckles. “No, but would you like to make a habit of it?”

_She wants to do this again?_

Finally, the last mandrake wisps away. The leg jerking settles into a more languid thigh swaying as Vanitas meets her eyes. She still had that gentle look she was always wearing with the giddy glint in it, maybe a little shinier than usual with unshed tears. He couldn’t think of any way he could possibly benefit from making her cry.

“What are we having tomorrow?”

♡ ♡ ♡

And so their little unholy early morning breakfasts in the library gingerly continue on. Xion brings all sorts of unusual snacks that the two of them get to try, and she even asks Sora to bring interesting foods back with him from the worlds he visits. On one particular week he visits San Fran Sokyo and Santa Cecilia respectively and brings Umeboshi and Saladitos home with him. Both of them scrunch their faces up like toddlers with lemons, and at dinner in the hall with everyone that night Sora asks her if she had a chance to try the little packages. She glances Vanitas’ way, wondering if it’s okay to talk about, but he says nothing, merely pushing his food around his plate.

“Vanitas and I tried them this morning.” That gets the attention of a few who had been aimless or stops a bit of conversation short. Vanitas tenses, imagining the fallout if his creatures were to run through the centre of the dining table.

Sora on the other hand, just squints his eyes and giggles his tinkling laughter, not missing a beat. “Really? How was it Vanitas?”

He rubs his fingers through his scalp roughly for a moment, hunching over. He can hear tiny claws scrabbling on the tiling underneath his portion of the table.

“....Salty as hell?” he couldn’t hide his surprise as he gestured, remembering the taste so vividly he missed a few extra smiles at the table. From beside him, Xion made a noise of agreement.

Simultaneously, Axel and Kairi made a ‘salt bae’ motion across the table, someone groans loudly, and then the conversation devolves into quotes from gummi vine as the older members around the table glance at each other in confusion. Xion gave him a little kick under the table, and well, if he managed to wince a little bit of a smile back at her, she wasn’t going to tell.

**Author's Note:**

> And here we are! Vanitas' no good very bad (but actually great) morning. I've never really made a 'series' like this before, but the other heart kids will be around in the future. It's pretty Vani-centric but he deserves supportive siblings so shoot me.
> 
> I could really use the morale boost to keep this going, so if you liked it, please, please let me know ;v; or if you have anything else to say tbh.
> 
> Catch me at @pelkiepel on twitter, and mooglory on my kh tumblr sideblog
> 
> See you soon! (:


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